How will Australia’s social media ban be enforced?

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AGE VERIFICATION TRIALS

When federal parliament passed legislation last week which will ‘ban under 16s from social media’ ‘preventing young people under 18 from accessing online pornography sites’, part of that commitment involves launching a trial of ‘age assurance technologies’ to determine the best way of enforcement.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese celebrated when the bill was passed, posting on X: “We’re doing everything we can to keep our kids safe”.

But is this really about ‘protecting children’? And just who is running this trial for age verification?

The trial will be run by a consortium led by a British company called the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS), who has been responsible for various ID schemes in the U.K.

It has previously tested software for Australian troops in Afghanistan.

The trial, which the government says is a “key plank” of its ‘online safety agenda’, will begin next year (yes, legislation was passed before a trial has even started).

According to the project plan, it will explore “…how different methods perform in verifying a user’s age without compromising their personal data”.

This, in turn, will help Australia “…establish best practices and potential regulatory frameworks for age assurance”, says the report.

The trial will involve about 1,100 Australians of ‘varying ages and cultural backgrounds’.

According to the project plan, it will test three main technology options:

Age verification – Using a person’s identity credentials, such as a digital ID or an uploaded driver’s license or passport. With this information, it is able to verify a person’s stated date of birth – and therefore, whether they are over or under an age threshold.

Age estimation – Analysing a person’s biological or behavioural features known to change with age, such as examining a photo of their face or recordings of their voice. According to the plan, these systems sometimes “…employ machine learning and artificial intelligence and may be subject to configuration settings or age buffers to avoid false positives based on inherent performance errors”.

Age inference – Which involves using known details of a person’s life circumstances to infer they are an adult, for example, because they are married, have a credit card or mortgage or because they have a government (.gov.au) email address.

At present, discussion suggests ‘age estimation’ is the popular option to begin.

However, as always is the case with dystopian laws that are passed, the early days of the program will only be Phase 1 of a larger plan — one that will likely include biometrics and link to a Digital ID system.

And, regardless of the method selected, the reality is that all Australians will be subjected to the requirements following the trial.

Indeed, this isn’t about ‘protecting children’ at all. Especially when in all facets of examination, the actual intended purpose of ‘banning’ young individuals will always be circumnavigated.

Leaving only the rest of the law-abiding populous who are giving away their sensitive biometric data to corporations and governments on a mass scale.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Anyone with a single shred of intelligence can see that trying to ‘ban’ certain individuals will never actually work for those who want to get around it, much like torrenting, China’s firewall, etc.

The real reason this is being done is so that a mass database can be collected, stored by either the governments or corporations that will be responsible for the verification.

Let me explain to you how each one of the methods listed above will fail in practice.

Age verification based on identity credentials (whether a digital ID or an uploaded driver’s license or other physical documents) is most reliable – as long as the person supplying the credential actually owns it.

What protections will prevent a 14-year-old from uploading their parent’s birth certificate?

Now, I believe they already anticipate this, so a new option will emerge requiring people to take a live photo of their face in real time, and to upload that photo alongside verified photo ID.

Facial recognition technology will then verify that the same person supplying the credential is pictured in it, by checking whether the face in the real-time photo matches the one in the ID.

However, as anyone who knows how easy it is to fake a live Snapchat picture will tell you, it can be difficult to prove whether a photo was taken live.

Can this really be implemented to be effective against savvy and motivated teenagers?

Next, the most popular discussion right now is ‘age estimation technology’, which is likely to include estimating somebody’s age based on (purportedly) real-time photo or video of their face.

Even ignoring the difficulties of determining whether a photo or video was taken live, this kind of technology is known to be imperfect.

Previous evaluation has shown that on average it is accurate within only 3.7 years of somebody’s true age. More concerning, it performs worse on tweens and teens than it does on adults over 20. So, age estimation may fail precisely when it is most needed.

We should expect similar challenges with ‘age inference’.

It is also likely to exclude many people including young adults who still live with their parents and therefore don’t have evidence such as rental agreements or credit cards.

What I’m trying to say here is that the notion of trying to ban people won’t work, as there will always be issues or ways around it, but in the meantime.. Australians will still be required to submit their personal sensitive information to access the internet.

Are you starting to see what I’m getting at here?

Do you agree to these laws that have been pushed through with little debate at all?

Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comment section below!

Members, I speak more on the biometric agenda in the latest member video:

Biometric Age Verification 👤

Australia is truly the Orwellian test bed.

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